“We’re going to cut a ribbon because we’re getting back below the 1960 level, and we’ll be there fairly quickly,” he proudly announced, adding that the “never-ending growth of red tape in America has come to a sudden, screeching, and beautiful halt!”

But Trump’s success in scaling back bureaucracy and the government oversight of private industry in the name of simplifying rules and eradicating redundancy in his first year in office is not as clear cut as he claims.

Trump’s own regulation czar suggested an hour after the President’s showman speech that such a massive rollback wouldn’t be that easy.

“I think returning to 1960s levels would likely require legislation. It’s hard for me to know what that looks like,” said Neomi Rao, the director of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Several experts agree, questioning Trump’s math and the effects of loosening rules that protect workers, the environment and keep American consumers safe.

The White House has inflated its deregulation record by counting congressional action, unpublished guidance documents and a reduction in the paperwork burden in their assessment, according to critics. And the new regulations they’re counting only include those deemed by the administration as economically significant.

“One thing is clear, the administration is not going to be returning to the level of regulations from the 1960s,” Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and director of the Penn Program on Regulation, told the Daily News.

Coglianese also found Trump’s assertion that the government had taken 67 deregulatory actions through Sept. 30 disingenuous.

President Trump cut red tape, and proclaimed that America will get “back below the 1960 level” when it comes to government oversight.Image by: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

“It’s not credible and it is misleading,” he said. “Clearly the administration has convinced a fair portion of the public that they have accomplished something meaningful, but a number of the 67 are fairly insignificant.”

Trump’s muddied message has distorted the distinction between “significant” regulations that have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, and less impactful rules, Coglianese said.

At the most fundamental level, Trump’s deregulatory success in his first year has hinged on reversing the regulatory records set under former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s predecessor imposed 494 major regulations during his time in office, a 37% increase over George W. Bush, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Since then, Congress has invalidated 15 Obama administration rules under the Congressional Review Act and the Trump administration has withdrawn or delayed more than 1,500 others by executive action, according to the White House. But the ones scuttled by the White House were proposed rules that had yet to be adopted.

But measuring Trump’s success in slicing through the bloated rulebooks of bureaucracy is complicated.

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Gina Haspel speaks after being sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence applaud in Langley, VA on May 21, 2018. ▲

Gina Haspel is sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency alongside Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a ceremony at CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA on May 21, 2018. ▲

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk with former North Korean detainees Tony Kim, Kim Hak Song and Kim Dong Chul following their release on May 10, 2018 at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington D.C. The three had been detained for more than a year. ▲

President Donald Trump speaks to the media on the return of the Tony Kim, Kim Hak Song and Kim Dong Chul on May 10, 2018. "We very much appreciate that [Kim Jong Un] allowed them to go before the meeting," he said. "Frankly we didn't think this was going to happen and it did." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had flown out to North Korea earlier in the week to finalize the details. ▲

Kim Dong Chul throws up a peace sign upon his return to America after he was freed from North Korea, along with Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song, on May 10, 2018. ▲

President Donald Trump officially pulled the U.S. out the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, 2018, reinstating sanctions against the country. The deal, drafted in 2015, did away with most sanctions against Iran in return for the country restricting their nuclear program allowing for the production of bombs; also included in the deal was Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Trump has repeatedly condemned the deal as "the worst ever." "The Iran deal is defective at its core," he also stated in his White House address prior to signing off on the document reinstating sanctions. "If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen." ▲

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President Donald Trump posed with children of the White House staff and media in the Oval Office on "Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day" on April 26, 2018. ▲

Some Obama-era rules, such as one requiring railroad companies to develop and implement a system-wide program to improve safety and another capping prescription drug prices, have simply been repeatedly delayed since Trump took office.

Others, such as rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands, have been canned by the current administration after languishing in the courts.

The fracking rules developed under Obama — companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in fracking — were never actually instituted in the first place after a federal judge blocked them in 2015.

Slashing the never-on-the-books oversight has drawn praise from industry groups and lobbyists, but environmental groups are not so pleased.

“Fracking is a toxic business, and that’s why states and countries have banned it. Trump’s reckless decision to repeal these common-sense protections will have serious consequences,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

Another regulation winding its way through the courts is a rule that would have required airlines to track data on lost or damaged wheelchairs and scooters in the same way that carriers report lost or damaged luggage.

A veterans group has sued the Transportation Department for delaying the rule.

“It’s been a very singular focus for the Trump administration,” said Lisa Gilbert, the vice president of legislative affairs at the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen. “It’s certainly not a success for the consumers or the general public.”

While Trump can perhaps claim victory by rescinding already stalled or delayed environmental or financial regulations, a Bloomberg News review found that a third of the so-called deregulatory actions the White House has touted were begun under earlier Presidents.

At Trump’s prop-filled presser, he claimed the government had taken 67 deregulatory actions through Sept. 30 and imposed just three new regulations. Instead of two for one, the ratio was 22 to one, he boasted.

Trump said the reduction in red tape led to an annual savings of $570 million for the country.

An analysis by the American Action Forum last month found that changes at regulatory agencies instituted in 2017 have saved roughly $378 million.

But the savings is mostly from paperwork reductions and regulatory delays, not the rescinding of rules themselves, according to Dan Bosch, the nonprofit group’s director of regulatory policy.

While Trump may have overstated his accomplishments in cutting back on government oversight in his first year, the White House is moving forward with an ambitious plan to scale back regulations at a breakneck pace in the future.

Eventually, Trump promised, the administration plans to do away with some 165,000 pages of the more than 185,000 in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research commended Trump for his first year regulatory victories, especially reductions in red tape involving sectors of the economy with ties to the environment, energy and labor.

“His opening salvo was filled with dark musing about nationalism, trade protection as the basis of prosperity, the need for law and order crackdowns, a call for New-Deal style infrastructure projects, and a hint of populist-fueled centralization,” Tucker wrote in a recent editorial. “The ethos of what has actually been accomplished is not buy and hire American; it is more from the Reagan era: get government off our backs. In this respect, there has been notable progress.”

And there’s certainly more to come.

The Trump administration’s plan going forward is detailed in the recently released Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.

The 579 actions outlined in the ambitious roadmap include 448 that are deregulatory and 131 which are regulatory.

“For the average American, this simply means that we will be less safe,” Gilbert told The News. “We expect these agencies, our government, to be on our side, the side of the taxpayers. The idea that instead of performing those duties the agencies will be focused on taking away those protections in the interest of big business is the issue.”

The Trump administration, with only days left in 2017, wasn’t done dismantling Obama-era regulations.

On Friday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement published rules that will rescind regulations meant to improve the safety of offshore oil and natural gas drilling.

The rules were put in place following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.

Rolling back the oversight could save the energy industry $228 million over 10 years and help reverse some measures companies considered too burdensome, according to the Bureau.

Environmentalists and safety experts were astounded how far the Trump administration seems willing to go to appease business leaders and energy giants.

“Rolling back drilling safety standards while expanding offshore leasing is a recipe for disaster,” Miyoko Sakashita, director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills. Reversing offshore safety rules isn’t just deregulation, it’s willful ignorance.”